Ep. 52 – The Curve Ball Called Divorced

Hello, my beautiful friend. How are you doing? Listen, I’m a little off today as it’s been kind of challenging for me today with, um, some basically bad news that’s kind of like out of my control. And of course, you know, we all deal with good times and bad times and things that just get thrown at you. And I was thinking about you and your feelings and everything that’s going on with your.

And how you may be feeling some of the same feelings that I’m feeling today. So today, let’s have a heart to heart and talk about when something basically stinks, when life throws you a curve ball, like the divorce or anything else that is going on for you. Right. So let’s get started.

Are you ready to create a life that’s better than ever before? We are Doreen Yaha and Jeff Wilson, and we are here to give you the strategies you need to create the life after divorce that you. And desire as partners, both in marriage and coaching. We use our expertise as well as our own personal experiences to help you make the next chapter of your life the best chapter.

So let’s have a discussion today. You know about when things like just don’t go your way when something basically stinks, and especially when it’s out of control, you know, it feels like you got served a curve ball. and it’s like a sucker punch right in the stomach. And for me, I find it hard to breathe. I kind of feel it like in my throat area.

So I was thinking about this and the adversities that I’ve dealt with in my own life. You know those times when you are like, really, can life get much worse than this today? They say they come in cycle of three, but sometimes it seems like more than that, like divorce. As we all know, that divorce is one of those freaking things in life that just stinks for.

Sure no one wants to go through divorce, right? They may want the divorce, but they don’t want to go through the divorce. They wanna jump right over to the post divorce time. They want that pain over as quickly as possible. When clients come to consult with me as a lawyer about their divorce, there’s two things that I get asked routinely.

One, how much is this gonna cost me? Right? And two, how quickly can I get it done? . I will say that through my own self coaching. What I mean by that is that I use all the skills that I teach on the podcast myself. I have learned, but it has been easy all the time. How to better deal with life. Curve balls. I used to get suckered into this like victim mentality that would show up for me, usually by me getting angry.

And believe me, I still go there sometimes. And what I realize finally is that anger. It was, I was like letting it overtake me, and it was actually, as you can imagine, making the situation, whatever, it was that much worse. I used to find myself spending all this time and wasted energy in this place of anger that was just causing me to lash out.

And then what would happen, and maybe this has happened for you, I had to deal with new issues as a result. Whatever I did, what in reality, whatever it was that made me mad or angry in the first place, was just one of those circumstances in life that was beyond my control or had already happened, or it was something I did that I wish I could take back, but I couldn’t undo.

I was speaking with a friend recently that I could tell was, you know, she just wasn’t in a good place. She was kind of quiet. She was a little snippy. I knew it had nothing to do with me, but I asked her, I said, listen, what’s going on with you? You wanna talk about whatever’s bothering you? I feel like something’s not right here.

And she was like, She didn’t really wanna talk about it, but I let her know. I just said to her, listen, if you need somebody to just listen without judgment and just to love you on that level, let me know when you’re ready. So a few days later she calls me up, I think it was like eight o’clock at night.

She calls me up and she’s like, I really wanna talk to you. And I’m like, of course. You know, so she’s explaining that she met this guy that she had, I, I know who he is. She had been seeing him for a while. She had been divorced, I don’t know, three years ago or so. But she met this guy, like, seemed like super nice guy, really happy.

They seemed to be hitting it off. he was in or is in, I should say, in the middle of a, his own divorce, but he had been separated for a while and he contacted her and basically told her that. . He wanted to try to make it work with his wife, talk about a sucker punch, right? Because they had been dating almost a year, been one of those long-term separation kind of divorce things.

But he had made a decision, rightfully so, if he wants to do that, to try to work it out with his wife. And so basically, you know, he. With my friend , not funny, but I’m laughing because you know, sometimes when you’re uncomfortable you just laugh. And so I’m laughing because she was just like laughing at first and then she started crying, like uncontrollable.

She was like really? Like I just met this guy and he’s like everything that I thought I wanted and you know, I can understand why his wife wants him back cuz he’s really just like this super, super nice. , but here’s what happened. She had no idea that it was coming. She told me she just was taken back, like she had no idea that he was really even speaking to his wife.

So that’s a different issue, but then to find out that he broke up with her because we’re trying to get back to her, that was a real hit for. So you guys know that feeling when someone tells you something and it’s just plain bad news and you are wishing, you know, like, oh my gosh, I wish I did not hear that, right?

Like, I wish it never happened. And for some of you, it may have been your partner telling you they didn’t want to be married anymore, or maybe it. A medical diagnosis for yourself or somebody that you love or a death or being let go from a job life is going along. and thing, things seem good, like okay, you know, either the good, they’re okay, maybe they’re outstanding, and life just throws you a curve ball and you’re like, what the heck is going on?

I know that we have to deal with these curve balls, but I’ll tell you what, I never want to, when it happens to. . So there’s a couple of reasons why th this happens. It can be completely out of the blue, like your partner asking you for a divorce when you think all is good in the relationship, or a di or a medical diagnosis or an accident, or it could be something you’ve done that you can’t take back either way.

I think that the feeling. For you can be the same. The feeling that we have when we get the bad news is something that is normal, right? Feeling bad. And so that is the first thing, right? We need to accept the fact that life is 50 50, things are gonna be good, and then life throws you that curve ball and things aren’t so good.

So, . It’s normal. It’s expected. I remember when I was, you know, at the height of my career, the kids were doing great. Everything was just plugging along. And I had a friend by the name of Doc, I’m gonna call him Dr. Mark, he’s a therapist in, uh, in town. He passed, um, he got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and passed within four months.

Okay. And the reason I talk about Mark is because he was such an amazing. Amazing human. He was, um, you know, a tennis player, an amazing psychologist, so well respected, just such a great guy getting to the age of retirement, not quite there, but you know, definitely like enjoying life and doing his thing and got this diagnosis and it was like, oh my God, really?

And he was gone months. . Unbelievable. Right? But I talked to him before he passed, before he knew he was sick. And I said to him, mark, you know, I wonder why I am always thinking that something bad is gonna happen when right now if you look at my life, like things are pretty good. And he’s like, Dorian, that’s just because it’s just life.

You know when things are going good, it’s not unusual to. that something bad is gonna happen. It’s just part of the experience, right? The human experience. And for those of you like me that have children, if something bad happens to one of your kids, , it’s like it happens to you, right? That mommy or daddy bear instinct can just take over.

you feel like it happened to you directly, like when your child is hurting, you know, because maybe they’re hurting from the divorce or they didn’t make the team, or they didn’t get, you know, they don’t get into the college that they wanted. It just hurts so, so bad. You know these situations when you put yourself out there on the limb, you know, you apply to a college, you try to get on a team, you apply for a new position, you get married, you fall in love.

You have a relationship like my friend. When you’re willing to put yourself out there and really wanna create something good in your life, really wanna take the chance, and then it doesn’t turn out the way that you wanted, you feel sucker punched. And I said that like for example, putting yourself out there when you love someone, you know, get married, apply for a job, start a business or something, and the answer is no.

No, I’m not interested. No, you didn’t get J the job. No, we don’t want to buy what you’re selling. The rejection just stings, you know, it stings can feel like, I wish I didn’t take the chance in the first place because it didn’t work. I don’t like that feeling of rejection. I don’t know anybody that does.

You know, it’s just not a good feeling, right? But regardless of your reason for why you may feel the way you do when these things happen, whether it’s because you know life through you, that curve ball, or you put yourself out there and you were rejected. I wanna talk to you today about some tools that I use.

When I’m in that mode, that really helps me to get out of it, to get out of it sooner than later. And if things are really good for you right now, you might want to listen to this episode. Keep, keep it in mind and put it in your back pocket for when you do need it. because things do happen, right? So the first thing I do, and this is how I deal with these life ball curve balls, I call ’em, or maybe I just call it curve ball

The first thing I do is that I acknowledge it. I acknowledge that I’m dealing with this curve ball or this mistake, or that someone I love hurt me or someone I care about is dealing with bad news. Like my friend, I take a. And I just lean into it, the thought that this horrible thing happened and it just stinks at this moment.

And again, it could be something that was beyond your control or something you did not think about, that you didn’t think would happen, right? But it hurts. Now if it’s something I did that I can’t undo, that’s different. Right? So we have the. Instance, whereas you don’t have any control over it. There’s an accident, you know, something like this happens, you don’t have control over.

It just happens. But then there’s the other things. The other things come when you do something right. And you can undo it. Have you been there? I mean, I’ve been there in my life. My friend. Not proud of it. Didn’t feel good, I can tell you that. But you know, you end up feeling like this, guilt and shame and you’re like powerless because it’s just out there.

This, you know, this thing has happened. There’s no undoing it. You wanna. But it’s just there and you can’t change what happened. So the first thing I tried to get is real about the emotion I’m feeling. Is it anger, embarrassment, sadness, shame, guilt. I suggest, you know, when you look at shame, it’s different than guilt.

Just as a side note here, you know, shame is like feeling there’s something wrong with me that. Efficient in some way that I’m a bad person. You know, something must be wrong with me. I did this thing and why do I do that, right? Why did I do that? But then there’s guilt and I see guilt as something I did wrong.

You understand the difference. So shame is like this feeling there is something wrong with you, with me, and guilt is I did something wrong. There’s a, there’s a distinction there, right? One is like self-hate, and the other one is just recognizing that you’re, you did it, but you don’t hate yourself so much about it.

I think that’s the guilt. Then I like to ask myself, If it was something that I created, did I do it on purpose right? Did I purposely lash out? Did I purposely offend somebody? Or was it an honest mistake? Right? You, you understand the difference, right? Sometimes we do things and we. Didn’t intend to hurt anybody.

It just was taken the wrong way, came out the wrong way. Maybe the person took it in the wrong way. You know, text messaging and emailing, that’s, that’s like famous for that, right? The words sometimes don’t really come out the way you mean it to be. So there’s a distinction between doing something on purpose.

And then there’s distinction of really being honest mistake. So I like to think about that. I do this so I don’t get into that place that I am the mistake through like that I’m a loser when I can get to that place that I really made a valid mistake. It’s like I almost become, it’s like for me at least and hope, this doesn’t sound freaky, but it’s like an out-of-body experience.

I become like this watcher of myself when I do this work. I look at, you know, I look at my thoughts and I think about what happened, or I think about the curve ball or what I said that hurt somebody. And then I look at myself and from like almost up above, you know, not in a Frankie kind of way. I become the watcher of my thoughts about the situation.

Then something I really wanna encourage you to do is to do the same thing, like really sit there and think about that because it’s so easy to get caught up in like this knee jerk emotional reaction to whatever you’ve been thrown or whatever you did, whether it’s being defensive or however it shows up for you.

When you are feeling completely powerless, you can work on your thoughts about the situation and deliberately decide with work. And when you watch yourself, the little watcher up there, you know, like looking down on you, decide how you want to think, how you want to feel, and how you want to act from that very point forward.

for me, before I learned all these coaching skills, I would not take the time to really think about my thoughts. And I have to tell you over the last two days I’ve been dealing, I, you know, started the, uh, episode today with something and I am not completely proud of the way I acted. Something to do with work business related.

something going on with one of my team members and just the way something was handled that I didn’t agree with, that I, you know, as the founder of the company and the owner of the company, I did not agree with. But it was already out there. It’s already happened. And my reaction was immediately anger, um, you know, it wasn’t good.

And I came at this person from a place of anger. Um, and it took me some work throughout the rest of the night to kind of rope myself back in and say, we don’t wanna make this worse story. Right. So taking the time to really sit and think about why it happened, your thoughts about it, and what you’re going to do, and how you’re going to think about whatever happened moving forward.

is super important and I’m constantly coaching myself. You know, I’m just human, just like all of you. You know, I’m not perfect at, by any, any, any stretch of the imagination, right? And I have to do this work constantly. But I said to myself, I’m like going to continue to be angry. or am I going to realize that I can’t, you know, this thing can’t be undone.

It can only be dealt with. And the way in which I deal with whatever this issue is, is going to define me, is going to define my relationship with my team member, who is an amazing person and I want on my team, and I have the ability to either keep that intact and to move forward. Have this as a learning experience for this person and for the rest of my team and for myself.

Or I can probably destroy the relationship, right? That wouldn’t serve me. I wouldn’t want that result in my life. So in the past, before I had these skills, I would instead. Just react usually out of anger for what happened to me or what I did. And when I didn’t slow down to really listen to myself and my thoughts and instead reacted without doing this work, I usually would end up just making it much worse.

Worse for me, worse for others, and worse for everybody. You know, I was, I defined it as almost acting like a toddler. That’s how I see myself at times. You know, when I act like that. Acting like a toddler that didn’t get the choice you wanted. You know, just having a complete fit and never ends up well.

Right. What I wanna convey to you from my own experiences is that you don’t want my friend to let your mind decide without your consent like an automatic. and end up making the situation worse. It’s really, really important. I see it so often in divorce. I see it so often in post divorce, co-parenting relationships that they are just so angry already and then something happens.

They no longer have, you know, they’re no longer married and there isn’t that same level of control on whatever level, and they just act out, and it’s like a vicious, vicious cycle of just. Hate and you know, just, and you get so buried in it. I also see it in litigation. You know, there’s a point of no return in litigation.

I honestly believe that practicing as long as I have. When you’re in litigation and you get to this point where you are just litigating the heck out of a case, whether, uh, because you are on defense or offense, or. comes a point where for the clients, there’s no turning back. It’s like you are so deep into it, right?

You’re so deep in your positions that the clients just have very little room to come together. I work really hard as a lawyer to settle my cases and to really avoid those circumstances because it’s just not good for anybody. It’s not good for either of the. Right. That energy could be spent in such an amazing different way, right?

Why do you wanna spend all your energy acting out and being a crazy person when you could spend all that energy, like doing amazing things for yourself, for your kids, for the world, right? Creating this amazing stuff for the world, you know? So I know that we do it because we feel powerless, right? And we are acting out of a place of defensiveness.

Most of us don’t, especially in today’s society, don’t know how to slow down and pay attention to our mind. Our brain is built to protect us, and so it immediately wants to get rid of the pain. This is another thing, and it’ll be like this stinks. And so let me just escape this and disconnect here cuz some people, instead of lashing out, they disconnect, right?

They’re like, I’m not talking about it. I don’t wanna deal with it. Or I just wanna go hide because this bad thing happened, or I did something that I’m embarrassed about, and they go eat an entire bag of Oreos. Or they drink a whole bottle of cab, or maybe instead they become like drama queens and kings and victims dwelling over the problem in their own mind, perpetuating it and talking about it with their friends over and over and over again.

I just wanna ask how that would serve you. This podcast, these episodes are for you, my friend, the tools that I’ve learned through my experiences being of, you know, a child of divorce going through my own divorce remarrying. being a divorced attorney for now over 25 plus years. I don’t even wanna say, somebody told me, if I say 28 years, it sound makes me sound really old.

Does it make me sound old? I guess I am kind of old, right? . I don’t know what’s old. It’s the state of mind, right? Keep your body in good shape and try to take care of yourself. What? That’s what I’m saying. It’s like don’t spend your energy there. Put it into like going for a run or going to workout or doing something amazing for yourself.

Cuz you, my friend, deserve. My best advice for you if you are dealing with life’s curve ball is to slow down and watch yourself. I think about it as w as keeping a watch on my toddler brain . I’m like, oh, boy, here I go, acting like that little toddler again, having a tantrum who didn’t get the, the toys she wanted.

Like, I really see myself like that, and I, and I can slow myself down, making sure that I’m not acting out. Throw, you know, acting out, throwing a tantrum. To deliberately deciding how I wanna think, feel, and act. It may be, it may be appropriate to feel hurt, shame, guilt, and that’s okay. It is what you do with the feeling that makes all the difference, can undo it.

Remember it. It’s where you get to take that powerless place to a place where you can then decide. and get your power back on some level, even if it’s small, a small level to decide and act on. And with purpose acting like a smart, a adult, we call emotional adulthood, right? Instead of a disappointed, out of controlled toddler.

And the other thing is don’t push it away. You know when you’re feeling this way and you’re feeling this, this curve ball effect, I’m gonna call it, don’t push it away by buffering it with false pleasures, but instead, I like to just. Know it’s there and allow it, the feeling to be there and carry it on with me throughout the day.

You know, I’m still feeling like the hurt from this whatever, this bad thing that happened, you know, like you, if you’re going through this divorce, you’re okay. Let’s just carry that feeling of the divorce along with you, right? It can be there. You can like even like say, Hey, you know, I know you’re here. I know I got through this curve ball.

I’m not liking this divorce situation. And, but I’m gonna go through my day and I’m gonna get up and I’m gonna do things that are gonna help me propel myself forward. Having these curve balls, it’s just part of being alive. This helps me also to realize that it’s just the balance, like I started off this episode with, of the negative and the positive, you know?

So for me, and I’m hoping for you and for. that are going through the divorce or maybe it’s post divorce and you’re still healing while it stinks, right? In the big plan of life, it’s just a curve ball. And then my friend, eventually you will be okay. You will move on. You will heal and it will get better.

Just allow. the pain. Allow the fear, allow the shame, whatever it is that you are feeling with or about inside of you as a result of the divorce, and just allow it to be there after you let the negative emotion be there after you become the watcher of your thoughts about what went wrong. after you don’t react out of that negative feeling.

And my friend, this can take, like I said, some time and you know also, but when you are ready, the next step when you’re ready is to start asking the question. And this one I think is super, super important, right? . How can this divorce make me stronger? Find the good and the negative? I’m using divorce as the example, right?

Because that’s why you’re here. But any of these negative curve balls, how can it make you stronger? What can I learn from this divorce so I can be smart? Next time, and what can I take from this divorce experience to create a better life for myself, for my kids, for my future? Learn from it. , just like I learned that, you know, not slowing myself down and being angry doesn’t serve me, doesn’t serve my purpose in life.

So what I ask you to do when I do this for myself is focus on at least three things. Okay? It’s gotta be three, can be more than three, but I want you to find three things that are better or will be. Okay. If you can’t, if you can’t grasp it now, like yeah, you’re like, what Doreen? No, there’s nothing good right now.

I want you to imagine, see yourself in the future. I want you to think of three things that are better for you as a result of the divorce. For me, the three things for my, in my divorce were one, I have three amazing children that were a result of that first marriage. Right? They’re amazing. I wouldn’t have those children, but.

My marriage, my first marriage, right? And yes, it ended in divorce, but without that, without giving myself the opportunity to fall in love and get married and all the fear that goes along with that, and yes, there was a divorce, but I have three amazing kids. Number two for me, that I was able to learn what I would not accept in a romantic relat.

moving forward, what I would not accept and what I did want, right? Did the hard work on that. I said, well, went through the divorce, but now I know what I don’t want and I do know what I do want, and number three for me is that, but for my divorce, I would’ve never met my husband. Right? My husband, Jeff, who’s the love of my life.

So I ask you to do this for yourself. There is always something good that comes out of something bad always. It may be challenging my friend to uncover it at this very moment, but the reality is that it is there whether you can realize it now or you’re gonna realize it later. Because sometimes you need more time to heal first and to do the work on that first, but once you’re ready, I want to suggest that seeing the good in the curve ball, the divorce will help to speed along your recovery past it.

That’s why do this podcast. I see now that some of my most valuable, valuable lessons in my life have come from some of. Painful situations that I’ve gone through. I mean, I could name them, right, but they’re there. And those situations molded me into the strong, successful entrepreneur woman example. For my girls example, for the world that I am today, the person that can reach for goals because I know.

How it feels cuz I’ve been there, done that. To feel the pain and the suffering and the adversity to get to the other side of it, to that better side, to reaching that goal to the much stronger version of myself at the time that you’re going through the difficult curve ball, it can be virtually impossible to see it.

I know I couldn’t see how I would grow and learn and be where I am today when I was in the thick of certain major adversities in my life. So I wanna help you along the way, through the divorce, through the healing after the divorce sooner than I did by reframing your thinking to see the good in it, even if it is something small like.

And let me just go here. I just did this with one of my clients. She’s like, there is nothing good from this divorce. It’s never gonna be good. This stinks, this sucks. I hate this, blah, blah blah. And I’m like, okay, well let’s talk about something, you know? And I said, well, you don’t have to clean up after him anymore, right?

And she’s like, yeah. And I said, in the house, now he’s out. Right? So no more fighting in the house cuz they were fighters, right? Yeah. It’s calm. , and you don’t have to ask him to make a decision on anything, right? I mean, you get to make your own decisions, right? So even if it’s small, even if, if it’s something like you don’t have to cook and clean for somebody, whatever it is, you know it’s there.

So start with a small. Things and work on it, and it will become clearer in time. It will become clearer as you heal. It will become clearer as you get stronger, as you have your chance to recover and get through it. A lot of times you can only see the best case scenario after it’s already in front of us, but, Even just realize the future things, right?

Like I said before, that it can be good on some level. So write them all down. Write the things that are obvious, write the things that are small and maybe prospectively. Think about the things that might. Be good. As a result, I’m telling you, this work is amazing. It’s better than watching Netflix, although I do love my Netflix from time to time.

Yes, I can binge watch just like all of us, but I’m telling you, listen, if you sit there and you journal on this and you really give yourself the opportunity to slow down and do this work, it’s gonna help you to get to the best version of yourself. This really helps if you are spiraling also in negative thoughts about the divorce.

It can help break that ongoing negative chatter that you have up in that brain of yours and push you in a better line of thinking, a line of thinking that can help you get your power back. Power’s important, my friend, right? So let’s do a little recap, right? I’d like to recap. It’s a lawyer in me.

Everything has to be outlined. You know, like an argument in court or something. I don’t know. So first, feel what you’re feeling. Feel it. Don’t buffer it. Feel it. Am I feeling anger? Am I feeling sadness? Am I feeling shame, guilt, whatever it is, am I feeling just hurt because of this curve ball? Like how could this happen to.

Next, watch your thoughts, right? Be that observer. Be that watcher of your thoughts, that little. I’m putting my hand up, you can’t see me, but I’m making a little circle over my head. Like that little like angel person that’s up there who’s watching your thoughts. Next, don’t react on negative emotion, right?

Calm yourself down. Do whatever you have to do to get there, but don’t drink the bottle of cab . That’s not gonna help. Next ask the question, what good can come of this? and start to do the work. Start to look at how you can now. The next thing is a solution to the problem. Spending more time on the solution to create a better, more exciting life on purpose after divorce as opposed to spending energy dwell.

On what you cannot change, you have absolutely a hundred percent the solution to create a better life after divorce. It’s all up there available to you, waiting to be unleashed by you recognizing that the divorce happened, but your life is not over that you love yourself. It will be okay and just repeating this over and over again helps finding the positive in all the hurt and pain that you can learn and grow and be better and stronger.

Ask yourself, but what else can be good and true from this divorce? If we can learn how to handle hard things, if we can learn how to deal with the curve balls thrown our way, the mistakes we make, we will be stronger. We will be better on the other side. So my friend, I encourage you to take your power.

Back by realizing that you do have control over how you think about your divorce, and from there you get to decide how you want to look at it and feel and what you want moving forward. Just know. I have been exactly where you are. I have worked with thousands through divorce, and while it may not feel like it today, you will my friend be okay and you can and will have a better life than before.

All right, my friend. Another heavy episode, right? Think about it. Create the life you want. And until next time, be good to yourself. Love yourself. Love those around. And have a most blessed and amazing week, and I’ll talk to you next week. Bye.

You have the vision of what you want your life to look like after divorce, but maybe you just don’t know how to get there. So if you’re ready to take control of your life and want to find out more about our coaching visit, At L A d-coaching.com, that’s l a d as in life after divorce-coaching.com. Until next time, have an amazing rest of your day.

And remember, yes, you can have an amazing life after divorce.